It was midsummer and the swirling columns of monsoon clouds covered the city like a lead shroud. The first desert rains in several weeks. I accidentally stayed up all night, anxious to get to the office of the Department of Economic Security (DES) as soon as it opened. I had never been to this location; it was near where I was living doubled up with friends after being evicted from my home a few months back. But in my experiences at other DES locations in the past, you need to arrive early to beat the crowds that usually form a snaking line out the door. 

The office was in a strip mall, surrounded by several stores hawking auto parts, furniture, flooring; there was even a dance studio, charter school, and iHeartMedia station. As I pulled the commercial door open, I caught sight of the vast cemetery that lay across the street.

Inside, the place was quiet. I had never seen a DES office so bereft of people. There was one person ahead of me. The secretary doing intake gave me a number; I had scarcely found a chair to sit on when a door swung open and a loud voice said, “twenty-three.”

The elderly woman behind the glass took my name and information. It had been a little under a year since I had been awarded food stamps and it had come time to renew them.  I wasn’t sure if I would still qualify since the Trump administration swept into office on a wave of pledges to slash social safety net programs. Twelve days earlier, President Trump signed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which put tighter restrictions on SNAP Benefits (a.k.a. food stamps), among other austerity measures for social programs. 

The elderly woman directed me to a row of desks to wait for a phone call from my assigned case worker. The tops of chairs leaned up against the desks, unmoved since the custodians had arranged them that way the night before.

After seven minutes, the phone rang. I answered and a woman named Becky initiated the interview. One of the first things she wanted to clear up was my address. Two weeks ago, when I filled out the application, I had put the “General Delivery” address for the local district of the United States Postal Service, which runs a free service for anyone who doesn’t have a permanent residence to be able to collect mail.

“Are you considering yourself homeless?” Becky asked.

Pause. “Reluctantly, I guess.”

Indeed, after explaining my situation—eviction and moving around a lot in the last few months, Becky designated me as “Homeless” and proceeded to slash my nutrition benefits from $290 a month to $161 a month—or 45 percent stamped out from what it used to be. 

My heart sank. In the past year, $290 went a long way but was never enough to cover monthly grocery bills. It lasted two to three weeks, tops, if I was diligent about spending as little as I could, chasing the sales and coupons, and supplementing my weekly food intake from a local food pantry. And now I would have to squeeze $161 as far as it could go.

The reason for the severe decrease, Becky said, was that last year I had no regular income. $290 was the maximum allocated benefit for an individual. As an independent journalist, I produced my I.R.S. transcripts which showed several thousand dollars in earnings from W-9 forms requested from magazines and newspapers that I had worked for as an independent contractor or non-employee. 

But this year, I had a small monthly stipend for a fellowship with a national nonprofit. Although it’s less than the federal monthly allotments for homelessness or disability—and I was technically earning less money than last year—the regularity of the income disqualified me from maximal benefits. Trump had nothing to do with it—at least not yet.

“What about the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ that is going around the news lately?” I said. “I’m worried that soon I won’t have any food benefits at all to supplement what little income I do have.”

“I honestly wouldn’t worry about it right now,” Becky said. “It was only a few days ago.” She said that it will only affect income over a certain amount. It won’t affect me. “And if it will trickle down to your benefits, it won’t for a while.”

Somehow that wasn’t reassuring.

But at least, for now, I had some food assistance. With no permanent address, Becky said, I qualified for “hot meals” for the first time: my food stamps could now be used not only at grocery stores for boxed and cold foods but also in the deli and oven-baked sections, as well as participating restaurants with a sign in the window that says, “We Accept EBT.”

But only fast food locations accept EBT: many (but not all) McDonalds, Carl’s Jr., etc. etc. These are the signs of food deserts—urban areas where fresh food is difficult to come by.

These government partnerships with the fast-food industry go back to the Clinton Administration and its deals to supersize the industry. The “Welfare-to-Work” program paid food corporations nearly the entire salary of workers whom the government kicked off safety net program support and into the labor market. The “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act” of 1996 required safety net recipients to work after two years of being on assistance, and capped safety net program support at five years per lifetime. President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is yet to go that far, but politicians are intent on continuing to chip away at our safety net. 

At one point in our conversation, some loud noises and dialogue punctuated the background. Becky apologized: “My granddaughter watches TV in my office.” 

I told Becky it was kind of her to watch her while her parents were at work.

“Well, she lives with me,” Becky said, “But yeah, mom is at work.”

I realized then that Becky was part of the welfare system too. She is a government case worker whose job is essentially a telemarketer, housing her granddaughter because she most likely has the most gainful employment in the family. The problem is not from the people who need help, or the people who are paid poorly to help them, but a government whose priorities do not include either group.

In the welfare system’s theater of the absurd, making less money, but making it more regularly, means less food.

Approximately 12.5 percent of Americans are on food stamps but often face many structural burdens. From people like me to people like Becky, with families to support, the burdens are immense and seemingly never-ending. Add to that people with disabilities or people without phones or cars. Lacking one valuable resource is a burden, and lacking multiple resources compounds the problems further.  

Instead of spending money on the military, immigration policing, and corporate welfare, we need robust social safety net systems that take care of people like me and Becky. Food—like shelter, water, other basic necessities of life—is recognized in the the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human rights: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

But what can be done to implement these words? If enough people and institutions demand, loudly and effectively enough, these ideas can be enacted and declare anywhere calling itself a “free society” would actually be able to live up to its name.

In recent years, upwards of 50 million people have been suffering from hunger in the United States, according to studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Despite its unique wealth and riches, Americans endured a higher rate of struggling to feed themselves and their families than all the “G7” countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom) in 2023.

There are some causes for hope. Since the pandemic, mutual aid organizations have expanded. And some places in Southern Arizona, like farmers’ markets and “Community Supported Agriculture” programs will not only honor the amount of food stamps someone has to spend but double them. Kinds of aid like this can go a long way to showing where a better safety net support system should continue to grow.

During the pandemic, I volunteered with my local chapter of Food Not Bombs—Tucson Food Share. Back then, I was more housing and food secure than I am now. I saw firsthand the cross-section of people experiencing food insecurity. I feel lucky to have been plugged into mutual aid networks prior to my eviction. The greater the growth of this model of communities helping each other to help themselves, the closer we can get to actual social and cultural nourishment.